For Opaque Reasons
by The Bud
Summary: For the nice Opaque.. I'm having trouble up.. loading! Aghhh!
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't Own X-Men, and I have no permission to use it, because if I  
  
owned them, I'd be Tyco and very, very rich.  
  
I couldn't think of a title for this, so I started thinking about a fanfic reader/writer that  
  
I find very kind, so I named it for her.  
  
Yer ol' pal, The Bud.  
  
  
For Opaque Reasons.  
  
"You thought yourself rid of me." A man no less a man, and no more a demon that  
  
the devil's own fallen angels, mused as he faced his screen. "But I've been here,  
  
behind you all along, planning your next move. Your next hundred moves before you,  
  
yourself know them." He sits and watches, for little more than amusement,  
  
for a world more for reasons few people have come to fathom.  
  
He sits and waits. He sits to watch the fruit on the genetic vines he spent  
  
decades more than just a century growing, pruning, at other times burning to  
  
the ground to bear fruit.  
  
Life is a chess game to him, just black and white squares with no right, and sadly,  
  
no wrong. There are only peices to play on this board, and to topple when seen fit.  
  
Scott Summers toppled when this man saw fit, and Scott's wife lain to be  
  
unprotected, with no other peice to keep her from being captured.  
  
" Yes, this is how it would be, had I not been the wiser and placed my small  
  
kight to fill the space." He chortles to himself. His white, sharp toothed, devious  
  
self. "The queen, and the knight, how very Athuric, except, I do not choose  
  
to let Lancelot and Guenivere to be parted this time."  
  
He watches his pieces interact with the other, less inportant now, but soon  
  
to be interesting players on "His" stage.  
  
Storm, how her powers can be so usefull, and Gambit, the poor player whom  
  
now strutts his final hour, unbeknown to him, and Rouge, the tragic beauty  
  
whom shall benifit though Gambit's demise, by finding whom would make the best,  
  
genetic partner for her.  
  
"The Professor, his only use to me, is but to teach, raise my  
  
future warriors and then to death." The pale villan says with a flair.  
  
Mr. Sinister bellows in what might be called a laugh, but only by streaching  
  
the word to it's furthest meaning as he regards his pawns. He watches  
  
the young children play, he watches them grow as his own solders, in infancy  
  
just babies, for now. Later, to be weapons, unstoppable weapons. Something higher  
  
than mutants, something more like the monster he is.  
  
End 


	2. Cancer

Disclaimer: I don't own this, please don't sue me!  
  
  
Cancer.  
  
"Gambit, When I banned smoking in the mansion, did you think I had done so  
  
for no reason?" Beast said as he looked over charts again and again, hoping what  
  
he saw was mearly the result from fatgue, and not what at all, what the numbers added to.  
  
  
"What an excellent manner ya have, Bete." The cajun coughed. "First, Ya tell me  
  
I got cancer, then Ya yell at me for getting it." Gambit, Remy LeBeau, had  
  
been smoking for years, sence he was thirteen, when it was cool, when  
  
that was all he ever saw, when the burning manifestation of his powers drove him  
  
to needing the distracton. "How long have I got?" He said, feeding his  
  
addiction one more time.  
  
"Put that out." Beast demanded. "as I told you before, the effects of cancer, a mutation of it's own,  
  
has never been fullt studied in the mutant population." Beast sighed as  
  
he rubbed his tired eyes. "Have you thought what to tell Rouge yet?"  
  
"Again, you only make me feel better." Gambit wheezed sarcasticly. "And the  
  
answer is no."   
  
"What are you going to do?" Beast looked up at the tall man.  
  
"I'm going to see an old friend." Gambit said as he walked out to only he knew  
  
where.  
  
"I hope you know what you are doing." Beast thought to himself as he set  
  
to a new task.  
  
Nebraska.  
  
"Ya can't get what you want all the time, Sinister!" A sickly cajun drawl ecoed  
  
through the underground tunnle that once lay under under an old orphanage.  
  
The orphanage that Scott Summers grew up in, the one he watched his brother  
  
leave with new parents, the one where he manifested his powers, the one where he came  
  
when his parents died, and in turn, died. Remy LeBeau, an orphan himself  
  
knows this, knows the man he now talks to arranged that fate for both of them.  
  
A place that Remy remembers to be like so many places he lay his head,  
  
a place that makes him sick.  
  
"Point blank, my dear boy, yes I can." Sinister dismissed his guest by  
  
feining interest in a small sample on a slide, under his microscope.  
  
"Unless you can offer me something I want more." The induendo sent chills  
  
through the room, one that the artificial lighting certantly couldn't warm.  
  
The room so many a mutant has beeged for his or her life, the room so many  
  
had ended unwillingly.  
  
"The one thing of me Ya don't have." Remy grimaced. "My DNA, I never let you near me long  
  
enough to get it when we worked together." Remy basicly is the question, wrapped inside  
  
a puzzle, wrapped inside a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma, wrapped inside a box of charm,  
  
If he doesn't want you to know, simply, you don't. Sinister thinks himself the grand  
  
master of all that is mutant, still some, he has so little effect.  
  
"Why do you think I orphaned you and led you to smoking?" Sinister laughed as though  
  
Remy were foolish not to know such things.  
  
Remy merly smiled, as usual, he had an ace up his sleeve, for love, he carried the  
  
hearts, to steal, whether a lady, or goverment papers, a diamons, so on, and so forth  
  
with the spades, when he will triump, ans clubs, when he gets down to being dirty.  
  
Remy had the clubs. "Why do ya think I have powers? You are not God, Sinister."  
  
  
"What do you plan on doing with that, you fool?" Sinister growled through his teeth.  
  
"Play a marter?"  
  
"Mebe. Ah know, Ah die now, you can't get what you so please, you cand engineer another  
  
me, that can counteract Rouge's abilities. No more mutants with my... Allour."  
  
Remy grinned.  
  
"And how did you know this?" Sinister quizzled impressed.  
  
"You may think you plan every move, Sinister, maybe even every several,  
  
but I'm here, in the dark, behind you, and you never even knew. Give me what I want."  
  
Gambit sneered as the upper hand was his and he hadn't had to play his trump card.  
  
"I'll give you what you ask, but on one term." Sinister granted.  
  
"What?" Remy asked. "And if you want another life, find another pageboy to  
  
to your reckoning."  
  
"Nothing as that, I just want a small thing from Beast's lab." Sinister requested.   
  
"I want the notes on Raychel's birth."  
  
"Fair. But I figured you knew all about it." REmy looked puzzled.  
  
"Let us just say, I was out of town." Sinister smiled as he regarded his most prized  
  
specimin.  
  
"Don't even think about it, or I'll turn your lab into electronic gumbo." Remy said as he left with  
  
his cure. " I'll be back, and remember, I own you." The he was gone.  
  
"I own a little more of you that you think, swamprat." Sinister thought as he returned to his slide.  
  
End. 


	3. Cheaters Never

I so do not own this as Marvel has all the trade rights and I am but a poor player.

O.K., I don't own that either, but the point is made.

Cheaters Never…

There, behind the coughing and hacking, behind the constant bright red gobbets of mucus tactfully expectorated into tissue, lays a man.

There underneath the sad sagging skin from the missing pounds from an already sparse frame, obscured by the wafting fragrant smell and the gray smoke of his addiction, there was Gambit.

Encompassing it all, there was his cancer.

While such a small thing, relatively speaking of course, his cancer ruled what was left of his life. While he knew it was not healthy to do so, he kept smoking, there was no point in quitting now, death was not going to own him, while it would soon indeed claim him.

The pain was incredible, as though glass had been imbedded in so many parts of his body. That wasn't pleasant, and being so tired that the thought of crawling to his bed, twenty feet away from his chair was simply too much effort.

The worse part was that he knew what he was leaving behind; Rogue, his sweet Marie. The sharp twinge that made it's way down his left arm was nothing compared to the ache he felt in his heart every time he had to tell her good by. Every time he had to be cut open to remove this that or the other to give him another day, wasn't anything close to being as terrible as having to watch her sorrowful little face fade into the blur of people as he was wheeled down the hall to be drugged into more missing time.

Time, his ultimate luxury and enemy, time he could have used to give her the life she wanted. Time to find a way to give her children, to touch her, to spend weekends under the covers together telling secrets.

That was all gone now. Over with. Kaput. Now, he'd just love to have the time to hold her hand once again.

As a man who once cared very much for his own appearance, he hated to look at his own once well-manicured hands. His fingernails found themselves to be a bluish hue, and his skin became yellow and waxy. His hair that he was once so proud of started falling away months before he knew he was going to die.

Death is the only thing every man has to fear looking forward to. Being a mutant with cancer presented it's own problems. His powers went haywire, igniting anything in contact with him, evolving to do things he never thought they could. Things he hadn't touched in days suddenly finding their own life, wiggling every which way, shaking and finally exploding in a fire ball of orange and yellow, pieces glittering like snow on it's downfall to earth.

Now, he has to be in a complete living room, no inanimate object to catch his power and explode. A room made of a living tree, courtesy of the Shaman's daughter, even the nurses and doctors have to come in nude. This was discovered after Beast's lab coat caught and Beast ended up in a bed too, covered in burns and melted hair.

But Marie, she'd been great through it all. Doing everything she can to make Gambit more comfortable as he started to slip way. Not to mention that she had to follow the same dress code as the staff when she visited. Everybody did, and that wasn't always pleasant.

Now, he's headed to get yet another polyp removed, and she stands there as she had so many different times before, her face fading to the background and altogether and all Gambit wishes was that he had the time to…


	4. Cajun Blood

I'm lower class and don't own this. Please don't sue.

There once was an incredible story, a love story of sorts. A southern love story filled with the heat and passion of a southern summer. There was sweat and there was lace, there was perfume and there was the wafting smoke that only a sultry fire can create. There was once Rogue and there was once Remy.

Cajun Blood.

"Don't tease me, Cheri, you know what you want from me." A man drawls in southern comfort, sitting lenient on his well-worn leather couch, a chalice of claret liquid breathing in his bowled vessel. His left foot rests slightly on the polished brass edge of an heirloom glass table.

"It's that Cajun blood you've got, Remy." She looks at him in such a sensual way that the warm southern night cannot claim the salty drip forming on Remy's hairline and slowly descending along his high cheeks to drop of his stubble adorned chin, leaving a wet trail.

"What can I say about my Cajun blood?" He swallows hard, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing slightly, almost begging to be bitten on. "It runs hot." He smiles his come hither smile. "It's got a spice of it's own." He'd rise to greet her soft, supple and sweetly southern body, at least he'd like to but he can't. Not in those pants and not with the sway of those well formed hips.

She places a finger upon his lips to silence him, giving him the barest peek of what a humid night does to black lace on a moist body. The auburn curls mingling with the damp sweat of her body graces his neck as she places her lips to his.

"Marie?" Something, someone calls her name. "Marie?" The second beckoning drawing her away from her desperately fading memory as she opens her deep green eyes to the sterile lab she finds herself in. She remembers why she came here now, the thought of Remy washes over her as she fights herself to bring her wandering mind into control.

"You really should have announced your arrival, child." A gray skinned man comes into focus. "I arrived in time to disable my… pets." Pets he calls them, the vile mass of mutated and barely sentient human forms, no doubt of his own work and research. "Why do you come?"

"I have what you wanted from Gambit, now give me what I need to cure him." She springs to her feet, albeit a bit wobbly. "That was the deal."

"Ahh, yes." Sinister, the gray skinned man with a voice of timeless English and grating metal smirks as he rubs his bearded chin. "You see my dear, these papers, I presume you mean these papers, were my bargain for Remy. As I have these now, and I thank you, my bargain with you must be different." He shakes his head almost in pity. "You didn't think I could do this for everyone, did you? I'm not a charity."

"Why you snake in the grass!" She spits as she prepares to fight him, only to be stopped by a wave of Sinister's hand as it weighs down on her windpipe.

"My dear girl," He hisses as he draws her face to his. "First, here you are powerless, second this is now way to thank your host and third, your comparison is incorrect. You knew what I was before you came to burden me." He releases her with a final squeeze and then a push.

"Then what do you want to save him?" She questions as he regains her breath. "I'll do anything to save him."

"The child." Sinister looks at her, his eyes glowing red and his voice deepens to a low, menacing growl.

"What?" She asks shocked as she holds her bruised throat.

"Don't play games with me, girl. You heard what I want from you." He changes his tone to something of a mellow nonchalant. "Get her and save him."

"Scott and Jean would never let you have their daughter!" She tries to scream, but all she can manage is a hoarse whisper. She still cannot get her legs to work under her, perhaps she can't get enough oxygen to power them, and perhaps he managed to break something.

"Silly girl, your legs are fine, but I'll repair you for no cost, and you'll save Remy, for the child." He smiles as he approaches with a syringe filled with a clear liquid. "Ether you give her to me and know definitively where she is, or I take her and no one save myself ever sees her again."

She gasps as the liquid is plunged into the base of her neck. "Why do you want her?"

"Stupid child." He mocks. "She is only half of what I want and my motives aren't for you to question." He sighs and helps her up, wiping away her pain filled tears almost fatherly. "Now be a good daughter –in- law and do as father says, if you ever want to have again the type of dream you dreamt in my halls today as you lay dieing."

"I don't get you." She tells him as she starts to gingerly walk away. "And I won't do it. Remy would rather die than harm that child." She sneers over her shoulder.

"He very well may." Sinister laughs at Rogue. "You are going the wrong way, you'll have to come back by me." He looks at her as though almost in second thought. "Bring me him, and Ms. Grey. I may be able to heal them both."

"Both?" She looks the monster square in the eye. "What do you mean both?" She questions as goose bumps pimple her skin as she feels nothing but cold emanate off this man's skin.

"My dear, I do have my legacy to keep." He smiles at her as he steps aside. Nothing about this man is ever strait forward, he doesn't really lie; so much as he misleads the truth.

"How can you be so cold?" She shivers at his words, his demeanor, and the very air of malevolence about him.

"I believe I've been generous to an intruder at my home." He tells her as a flash of light envelops her, filling her eyes with the bright luminescence of all colours blended into one. Slowly to her, but instantaneously, blue and green come to focus as she finds herself in the gardens under a bright red and yellow leafed apple tree.

"Marie?" Something, someone calls out to her. A strong northern voice carrying the crunch of the northern winter and northern snows with it. "Marie?" It calls out again, as gently as a snowflake and as melting as the tiny crystal as it lands on a wet, hot tongue.

"Logan?" She wakes in a start. "What happened?"

"We know what you had to do for Remy, it was a small price." He tells her as the chilly late fall air starts to bore through the thin jacket she wears. The frost had cloaked her form, but left her shadow adorning the ground. "Did he give you the cure?

"No, Logan." Her very words freezing her to her core. "What I gave him isn't what he wants anymore."


	5. Grey Lines of Evil

I don't own this, just ask the people suing me.

Grey Lines of Evil.

"I heard what it is he wants!" Scott Summers' voice booms through the freshly painted halls of his ex-wife's new home. "He can't have it, or her!"

"Scott," Jean softly says as she holds her infant daughter, stroking the child's soft, red curls as she coos contently in her mother's arms. "Rogue gave another option, I think we should take it."

"Don't you remember what that monster did to us?" Scott gets quieter suddenly as he runs his hands through his chestnut colored hair in exasperation. He remembers those nights all too well, the cold table, the machines, the poking and prodding and then the one thing his soon to be wife, Emma hasn't yet, nor may she ever get over; Jean getting pregnant with Scott's child.

"Do you mean Rachel?" She looks at him coldly as she moves the child away from him. "I know you resent her, Scott, but the fact of the matter is what happened between us happened and we have her now. I wouldn't have it any other way."

"You know that's not it! And just what do you expect is going to happen when he does the same thing to Gambit and you?" He bites the insides of his lips, giving him his characteristic prune face expression. His face turns red at the implications his outburst has led to, she knows it too, but at this point, he doesn't think it matters, so he tries a different tact. "Rachel's only four months old, Jean, do you want her missing out on a mother?"

"Scott, don't even try that with me. You know what we've hidden from everybody, you know what Sinister told Rogue is the truth. I'm doing this so that she will have her mother and Gambit is doing this so that Rogue can have him." She looks at him with her stern, green eyes flashing. He remembers why he fell in love with her in the study so many years ago. They were teenagers, but back then, even being teenagers, they felt and thought older than their innocent years. She was fifteen going on forty and he was a shy eighteen years old. She was headstrong, cultured and above all else, her own person. He was always searching for himself, insecure, needy. He was thrust into one situation after another where he was at another person's mercy, until she came along, he never knew who Scott Summer's was.

"Don't look at me that way!" She threatens him, pulling him out of his thoughts. "You lost that right when you left me for Emma." Almost as though it was summoned to do so, the doorbell rings. It, for Scott is a welcome distraction as he takes his small daughter from Jean's arms as she goes to answer the door.

Again, almost as though summoned by his very guilty thoughts, Emma breezes through the open door. "You've got to check your phones. Beast has been trying to contact you, it appears Gambit needs to see you."

"You could have telepathically contacted me, Emma." Scott stares at her before realizing that due to the power inhibiters that Hank put in to combat Jean's wildly fluctuating powers. Instead of telling the truth, Beast led people to believe this was a mutant postpartum problem. "Oh, sorry, sweetie."

"I though that we were going to look at china patterns today." She looks at him before turning to Jean. "I saw your latest line at work. Cute."

Scott knows that Emma is only appearing to try to play nice. He knows that she doesn't care for Jean, nor Jean's work. He knows she's up to something.

"I'm not here to be mean, or snippety." She smiles. "But you need to get over there. Gambit refuses to calm down until you do and Rogue is in near hysterics." She looks at Scott holding his child and he knows she's seething inwards. Her blue eyes almost freezing in their gaze as she starts to speak. "You know, he's genetically your brother, you could be a little better to him."

"Sinister is not getting Rachel, Emma." He growls at her as Jean takes the child to go with her.

"I meant that you could visit him." She snaps back. "He's only asked for you a dozen or so times."

"Just lock up when you're done." Jean says as she quietly shuts the door, neither party seeing the suitcase she totes with her.

"Maybe I can't stand to watch him die, Emma." Scott turns away. Death has never been a subject he had done well at facing.

"Get over it. Sinister is playing chicken with us." She barks at him. "If he wanted Gambit dead, he would have done it by now. This is just his way of getting what he wants from us."

"Emma, you know it's not anything of yours he wants." Scott tries to calm her down as he places his hands on her tight shoulders, rubbing them gently.

"So what's wrong with Jean?" She demands of him. "Why does he want Miss. Perfect so badly?"

"It's complicated, she was infected with something some time ago, but her telekinesis kept it down, like Wolverine's healing factor." He explains as they head for the door.

"Like Nathan, you mean." She looks at him, giving him the chance to drive.

"Exactly like Nathan." He tries not to look at her. Cable's death was a blow to the whole mutant community. He was just so physically weak as he went into his last battle, someone, more than likely got the drop on him as his pain became too much, and gut him shamefully. Domino was too late to save him, too late to keep the oozing mass of infected entrails from sloshing to the ground as he gurgled his last breath. But not too late to avenge his killer, some anti-mutant scum spitting on Cable as he bled out, only to share his fate.

"What about Gambit? Is this the same?" She asks. Concern is an unnatural thing for her.

"At first, we thought it was because of his smoking, but Hank thinks now this was genetically engineered." He says as he starts up the car. "Sinister did this to get whatever it is he wants."

The peace does not last as they roll off the property and Emma is flooded with painful psychic backlash. Her eyes roll back into her head as spit foams at the corners of her mouth, an eerie pink tinge takes form as small amounts of blood finds vehicle in it. Scott knows to get to the mansion, something must be terribly wrong.

And he's right. Rogue rushes to him, her forehead bleeding, and for somebody almost completely invulnerable, this isn't an easy task.

"He got them all Scott!" She screams as blood smudges her white bangs and starts to blind her. "We couldn't stop it!"

"Calm down and help me get Emma to the med-lab!" Scott barks as he pulls Emma from the car.

"Scott! There is no med-lab left! Jean and Remy melted it when Sinister tried to take Rachel!" She's so frightened; her breath only comes in gasps. "Jean had something in a suitcase that neutralized all our powers, something that Beast gave her for when she had to travel to keep her stable. I don't know why it didn't work on them…it was just so fast!"

"Where is Rachel?" Scott demands as he puts Emma down on the ground to check for pulse. Hers is good, her breathing is fine, and she's just out.

"I told you, Sinister took them all! The only thing left was that suitcase!" She looks at Scott like he's stupid. "Jean and Remy told him to leave the child be, they gave her to me to get her out of there, then, when he sent those… things after me, Jean killed off the cell, Remy melted it and Ah ran. Sinister caught up with me and took the baby, then he did this!" She sobbed. "Ah'm sorry, Scott! Ah did everything Ah could! If you don't believe me, take your glassed off."

"Where is Beast?" He asks ignoring her as he wipes the foam from Emma's lips as she wakes up.

"He had to find some clothes until he could disarm the neutralizer." She says as she calms down, there's only so much panic your system will endure before creating it's own sudden calm. Much like how you feel after a good cry.

"Scott?" Emma slurs as she wakes up.

"I'm here." He tells her as she tries to think as to how Jean and Remy's powers remained unaffected. It hits him. Her powers weren't ever neutralized, whatever she had, she needed her telekinesis to battle it, Beast gave that pack to her to protect her from other super beings, perhaps in specific, Sinister. She put it outside the door of the room to keep him from using his abilities, to give Rachel a chance of getting out of there, and to keep everybody else safe. Without powers, they wouldn't be able to fight in a way to cause them harm, just Remy and just Jean. They must have planned it this way, hoping for the best outcome for all involved, just one complication, Scott didn't keep the baby with him.

"They did it to save all of us." Emma tells him as she places her head against his chest.


	6. Amino Acids

Disclaimers aren't always easy to write, but the must be done so that everybody knows that the contents hereof are borrowed and owned by someone else with liver spots.

Amino Acids, and Strands of Damaged Code.

"You don't have the nine months needed to get the perfect cure for you, Remy." Mr. Sinister, or, should you be several centuries old, and knew him before he lost all traces of humanity, Dr. Essex, tells his captive almost like he's telling him that it's cloudy outside. "But, Rachel's umbilical cord blood should make a nice patch up while I wait."

"De jokes on you, Sinister. Chemotherapy makes men infertile." Remy tries to laugh as he attempts to sit up.

"Normal men, yes." Sinister shakes his head at Remy's ignorance. "You are a mutant, Remy, remember? That and I made sure that one of your testes weren't ever functional to start with. The hormones I'll give you will fix that in about two weeks, until then, make yourself comfortable."

"Why did you do dat?" He demands as he slumps back down.

"Why, Remy, I wanted to make sure I had grandchildren one day. Besides, surely you noticed that no matter how much you exercised, you never got bulkier. That's a hormonal problem, one to my advantage." He dismisses Remy. "Now, if you excuse me, I need to check on Ms. Grey's fertility report."

Sinister arrives a small time later at the room in which he holds Jean Grey and her daughter. He's pleasantly surprised to see that she's not plotted to escape, and that the infection she has, hasn't progressed to harming her organs, particularly the ones that Sinister needs most. Cable was infected so young, he was never of use to procreating the Grey line.

"Ms. Grey, how good to see you docile and not melting my form into puddles of goop." He smiles at her much as a cat after his prey. "The good news is that you are completely fertile, you could have multiples with no help, and your…illness is indeed as Dr. McCoy surmised, not passed through your breast milk. In fact, it's made Rachel develop immunity to the disease. Something I'll need for round two."

"What is your interest in my offspring?" She demands as she looks at him in a way that would chill any mans blood, should they have any.

"Of your precious bloodline, only you and the two Rachel's exist. I need to rebuild my stock. Nothing more." He tells her in haughty Victorian fashion. "You may continue to work from here, as I well know funds are needed to rear children, and don't worry, you won't be here long, should I get what I want." He exits to the unnaturally lit hallway. "I'll make Remy well enough now, but you'll only get your cure when my future is born."

Around two -thousand miles away, eastern bound.

"How long is it going to take to dismantle that inhibiter?" Scott asks impatiently.

"It's Forge built and he's on his honeymoon." Beast snaps at him. "I've been at this for days, and I'm wearing clothes that could pull a "Hulk" any moment, we've got missing team members, not to mention your daughter, and you're worried about getting your optic blasts back within a half -mile of this box! Did I mention my med-lab is in tatters?" He turns around, his face and older version of the one Scott first knew him with. "When and if they are returned to us, how am I going to treat them? I couldn't even do proper tests on Emma; I had to call in "I'll owe you one" to Dr. Reyes. So please, keep riding my back about as to why I gave your Ex-Wife a box that renders the mutants that could cause her, in her weakened state and your daughter harm."

"Beast…Hank, I'm sorry. I'm just exhausted and nervous. I'll see what I can do about the lab." Scott looks down ashamed.

"See if Kitty has had any luck salvaging some of the information off those computers too, if you can." He asks as he turns back to his task. His brain flips to his storage freezer, the one where he banks every child's cord blood that's been born here. He takes off running, dropping his work with the inhibiter, and reaching the basement tanks a quarter- mile under the mansion in record time, for not having his mutation to help him. He kicks himself for not thinking of this earlier, but someone only comes down here for basic maintenance, or to place something in here. It's stripped clean except of a few marrow samples of some of the death prone team members and the few Morlocke children born here. Gambit's untainted blood samples are gone, everything pertaining to Rachel and Nathan, even one from a miscarriage Madeline suffered early in her relationship with Scott. Then he remembers from when Madeline was found to be Jean's clone. Mr. Sinister has always maintained, "An original is always better than a clone."

He doesn't mean to simply cure Remy and Jean; something in each of their genetic codes provides something valuable to Sinister. Gambit was to be Sinister's new body when he was made, it's not only Remy and Jean that are sick. Sinister needs them to cure him.

"Beast," Scott puts a hand up to calm him down. "You're telling us that Sinister is going to take the DNA of a child he produces between Jean and Remy, insert some of his own during a cloning phase and make himself a new host?"

"No. An original is always better than a clone. He's going to insure twins, identical twins, leave Jean and Remy with one as a back-up and modify the other." Beast shoots him a dirty look. "How did you even think that from what I've said?"

"Why them?" Scott looks puzzled.

"And not just you?" Beast laughs at him. "You're Gambit's unmodified back-up. And Jean is as far beyond mutant as we are beyond Cro-Magnon. You and your brothers bridge that gap."

"But he's younger than me." Scott looks at him quizzically. "Are you well, Hank? I think you've been in these melted ruins too long."

"Yes, by about the time that you became brain damaged. He wasn't sure the original would survive, thus, enter Gambit. The one time you can have a clone be better than the first is to give it something the template lacks." Beast explained slowly.

"The chemo didn't make him sterile?" Scott asks, trying to wrap his brain around what Beast was getting frustrated at disclosing.

"I can't tell you, it violates doctor-patient confidentiality." Beast says as he gets to work contacting Forge. "By the way, I'm taking a bat to that box in about five seconds while Cerebra tries to get hold of Forge and Storm. Put your glasses on." He says as he starts smashing the several-thousand dollar piece of technology into recyclable bits of microchip glitter.

"Are you still here? Go get some people together with some ideas man!" Beast shouts at Scott as he sets to filling Forge in on recent events.

Two Weeks.

"Ms. Grey, as you no doubt know, invitro fertilization would take months of drugs to achieve, but, I nor any of you have that time, so by measuring your hormone levels, I can determine when you are in estrous, which is today, and I can take this sample fresh from Gambit, and because I bred you a fertile animal, I can be of good faith that you will indeed yield the child in which I seek." The man whom Jean Grey and Remy LeBeau have known most of life as, Mr. Sinister grins at her, if you can call his expression a smile, as he fills an apparatus with the milky liquid.

"Have you cured him yet?" Jean Grey half asks and half demands as she pulls at the bonds holding her tight.

"Rachel's cord blood did a sufficient job until your next child is born. And don't worry, my dear, Rachel is comfortable in the other room with Mr. LeBeau." He looks at her in a clinical manner. "Would you care to be awake for this, or asleep?"

"Awake so I can keep an eye on you, monster." She glares at him defiantly.

"Ms. Grey, you will never get better and Rachel will be stuck being Emma's red-headed step-child if you don't calm down." Sinister threatens as he places the instrument in his hands in its designated place. Her body arches in surprise, but she never turns her head, nor unlocks her gaze from Sinister, staring into his emotionless red eyes. "What I'm doing now is insuring your cervix dips into the semen pool Ms. Grey. Please don't mistake this as having any sort of compassion for you. You are merely a disobedient pet." He tells her as the apparatus sends waves through her body. "You made this easier when Rachel was conceived, you and Scott did most the work.

Gambit holds Jean's little girl a room over and he knows what just happened, what will happen several times over the next few days. Everything he hears is muffled, almost as though he's in the womb himself, but he knows from the screams muffled to moans through the wall what has happened. She did this in part to save him and in part, to save the little girl sleeping in his arms. Remy doesn't think she even cares about herself, and less so as the screams start again. He knows that Sinister will be back, to obtain another sample, he also knows that if he hadn't been so physically weak, Sinister would be insisting on the natural way to do these things.

The little girl shifts and coos in his arms. He knows Sinister placed her in here to protect her from the things that lurk these halls, things of Sinister's twisted creation. Remy knows because he once ran these walls himself as a Marauder, when he did things only monsters do, even killing children smaller than the one kept warm in his arms. He remembers when Warren found our Remy was one of them that he helped take Warren's wings, the pain on his face. Remy doesn't feel as though he even deserves the new chance at life this child gave him, and the cure the one that will be conceived will give him, but he knows he won't waste it. He will not let Sinister exploit this child further.


End file.
